


Rhapsody in Blue

by plutodraws



Category: Gravity Falls, Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon)
Genre: Bi!Dipper, Chorale AU, Fluff, International Tour, M/M, Underage Drinking, pinescone
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-15
Updated: 2015-06-19
Packaged: 2018-04-04 13:40:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4139784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plutodraws/pseuds/plutodraws
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Maybe it's my infatuation talking, which spikes like blood pressure every other year to warn me of my undoing, but my trivial excitement is in the hands of a certain student in a seat one row in front of me to my right."</p><p>AU in which Wirt and Dipper are part of a prestigious High-school choir group touring the Greek Islands. Dipper's got a girlfriend and Wirt's surgically attached to his books, but maybe something - or someone - will change that.</p><p>(Will get Explicit Tag as story continues)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Thursday Afternoon

_May 29th, 2014: Bus to J.F.K. Airport_

I'm playing the first portion of William Basinski's _The Disintegration Loops_ , however, the annoyingly similar hum of our coach bus to JFK is ruining Basinski's mystique. I've heard the drone before so there's no misinterpretation, but I'd still like to sink into the piece and I really can't. Instead I only admire it closely while half-listening (involuntarily) to the light hum of our bus's own drone. I could turn the piece up on my iPod; I still have 3 or 4 clicks available before i hit max volume. I refrain though. That would only ruin the serenity of the track, making its dusty clicks shine most and forcing its gain to rise unnaturally. No, shouldn't do that. Especially if I plan to write further.

I look up to see what is lightly touching my ankle seeing Jason's leg graze mine. He lingered for half of a second only to glare at his own legs as he lifted them slightly away from mine to their own side. He reminded me of my curiosity towards straight psychology. Specifically the idea of platonic touching.

Maybe this would be an apt moment for context. I’m Wirt Whelan. I’ll be writing from thousands of miles away on a cruise ship around the Greek Islands. My school (all-boys) annually provides a very expensive opportunity for all singers to tour together somewhere in the world. I was just lucky and useful enough to get an invite for my clarinet abilities, which our conductor Mr. Menard makes use of way too much during concerts (I'm barely used to playing in front of people yet). I’m friendly without many friends and...I don’t really mind.

Maybe it's my infatuation talking, which spikes like blood pressure every other year to warn me of my undoing, but my trivial excitement is in the hands of a certain student in a seat one row in front of me to my right. He has no idea of this fact, as any secretly admired subject wouldn't. Between sporadic reading and hearing sparse bits of Basinski's drone, I've battled sexual hypotheticals while casually looking at his ivory white neck. Thankfully, the seats of the bus split between two chairs, leaving a small gap for me to ogle grossly.

While my interest is frustrating and irreverent, it's mostly subjective. Dipper doesn't possess that brain-churning aura of advertisement hotness everyone knows is totally hot. That's what it seemed like, anyway. No way to tell when I'm the only one looking. He's gaunt and slim, sure. He has bony features that prod against cream skin that reminds me of clay ceramic. His muscles and jaw are defined, yet not too sharp to seem unkind. Unlike perfection, though, he is tepid and nervous, geeky and anxious, introverted and intelligent. He keeps his body the way it is so it's efficient during “wild chases”. That may just be a joke of a reason, but I'll go with it. I am the one who’s had his attention taken, anyway.

One sincere person falls for another, the other doesn't reciprocate. Wouldn't you guess — he has a girlfriend. Of course he would! now the whole "working out for wild chases" excuse seems like an excellent cover.

I've moved on to _Thursday Afternoon_ by Brian Eno. I want to continue the formless theme, and thankfully this piece is more noticeably pronounced than Basinski's loops. Not as capturing and dwindling, though. More embryonic. I need something to write to that’s engaging but not capturing...that's it, i'm moving to Fennesz's _Black Sea_. A bit more gloomy than the previous songs, but that's fine. I have a lot of time to work up a psychological storm.

* * *

Soon after my initial entry into this document, I moved seats and was sparsely talking with Arthur Buenavenci, a tall, skinny student of about the same age as me whose pale skin tone did not match his surname when I heard a skidding sound outside of our DATTCO coach bus. I seemed to be the only one who heard it, everyone else either talking or out cold. I chose to ignore it. I only remembered the skittering again when our bus pulled over to a halt on the edge of the I-95 interstate highway in Queens, which maneuver seemed just unlawful enough to question. After gawking at both sides of the bus's windows with mob curiosity, we realized that the hatch keeping our luggage secure in the bus's undercarriage had opened and some suitcases had skidded across the highway out of our bus.

Minutes pass, students easing the oddness with mediocre hypothetical-based jokes, until we see our conductor, Mr. Menard, along with Ms. Buenavenci, the mother of Arty who was unanimously the more lenient chaperone, carrying two misshaped bags in their hands. Ms. Buenavenci clutched a tough and still intact light red Samsonite, while Mr. Menard haphazardly clutched all tattered remains of a thick black garment bag. I could see some white and blue patterns poking through a torn edge of the bag in Mr. Menard's hands. Most kids had similar clothes already though, so no conclusive owner was clear yet. I kept looking as they got closer to our bus and I started to recognize the dimensions and features of my own things! Each student slowly extended into their seats as I passed blankly with impatient "excuse me"s trying to get off our bus to see this fabric corpse. I was certain it was mine at this point.

I took Mr. Menard's role of clutching this tattered bag, each side disconnected and without fasteners or zippers. Clothes were poking out between the suitcase like a messy sandwich. Each zipper was bent and wrecked. A single rolling wheel was completely missing!

I awkwardly sauntered back to my initial seat throwing my mutilated bag remains into the empty row behind me and sitting down with a quiet huff. I couldn't believe my luck...after last year, where my passport was incorrectly placed into Arty's bag and I almost got deported, I see this. No one else's bag, just mine! What dumb luck. I couldn't sigh big or loud enough.

Jason had left and was sleeping across an open row somewhere else. Before I noticed, Dipper turned around and got into Jason’s old seat...right next to mine. I faced the window, thinking about my bag and whatever I was thinking of before the whole incident, before I noticed his presence. my head swiveled and I stammered out a hello. C'mon, Wirt. Calm and cool. And no getting flushed cheeks or quoting Keats.

“Hey, how’s your stuff? You should contact the bus company or something, that whole thing really sucks.” He seemed genuinely interested, I think.

“Hah! Oh, yeah...this kind of sucks, but I’m just glad Menard grabbed all of my things. He mentioned how far across the I-95 he had to go to grab my clarinet case and concert tie. I think he stopped traffic!” I was a bit too bubbly and I knew it. I don’t know if he noticed; he smiled as I talked. Maybe I should've seemed more upset about my bag but with him next to me my focus was gone.

“That’s crazy! I wish I could’ve seen an entire highway stopped in front of me. That sounds so surreal!” Dipper replied, looking less at me and more at nothing in particular as he pictured standing in front of stopped traffic on the highway into Queens. He seemed more rebellious than I had thought. Er, maybe not rebellious, but...what's the word...creative? Whatever he was, he was certainly odd.

“Well, so, who are you rooming with?” Agh! I sounded pretty out of left field. Luckily enough he rolled with it.

“It’ll be me, Thomas, and Randall. How ‘bout you?”

“Well, um, I’m rooming with Arty and Summit. Hopefully they won’t cause too much trouble, I know Summit can sort of sometimes be a wild card...or something.” Wirt. You are bad at being casual. Just be natural! Wait, Wirt, that doesn't make sense, you're contradicting yourself.

“Haha, yeah, Summit is a pretty loose guy. Must be why the ladies all love him, You ever notice that?”

“Yeah, they really do love him. He’s just really loose and good-looking, it helps him out a ton.” Wirt! You just said another man is good looking, tone it down in front of Dipper.

“True. He’s got that movie-actor look goin’ for him.”

After a pause in conversation (where I felt very nervous for the state of both my bag and my growing erection, which was thankfully covered by the books I had on my lap) Dipper asked if I wanted to watch a movie.

“Sure! Do you have some on your laptop or something?” Again with the casual vernacular, look at me go! I’m like a regular teenage boy, almost.

“Yeah. I only had time to download one, _Kung-Fu Hustle_. It’s really cool and intense. I only have one headphone input so you take the right ear and I’ll take the left.” What a thought! Such a subtly romantic moment between Dipper and I, watching his movie and sharing headphones! I mean, he probably didn't mean much by it, though.

“That’s fine! Let’s watch it, it sounds sick.” Wirt. You did not just say sick.

“Okay, cool. Whatever we don’t finish we can watch later.”

My heart skipped a beat. What did he mean? Did he casually imply a very romantic encounter between him and me later where I enter his lone hotel room and we watch (but not really watch) the end of Kung Fu Hustle, both of us laying across his bed slowly drifting closer to each other staring into ea--NO! He didn’t! Wirt, please, you’re doing it again.

Dipper took out his laptop and we began watching. He was right — it was intense! I mean, I barely noticed the movie what with his physical being only millimeters away from mine and his beautiful blue eyes staring intently at his screen lighting a fire in my chest. We kept watching our respective sources of interest until our bus finally reached JFK, thankfully with no more baggage catastrophes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have some ideas of where this'll go, seeing how this loosely based on a true story. I'm very excited for where this could go. If you like it so far let me know and thanks for reading.


	2. Age of the Sea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Teens away from home are rebellious and stupid as more of Dipper's vacation woes are revealed.

_June 1st, 2014: On Board the Louis Olympia_

While the first entry in this diary/journal/whatever-this-is uses present tense, our group's collective activities have kept all free-time reserved for coffee, small paid meals, and midday naps, meaning everything of note will be thoughtfully recounted in the past tense. This works out for me anyway, seeing how it's always more fun recounting the past with its sentimental garnishes rather than filling in the present with redundant contemplation. I'm writing from my room aboard the Louis Olympia, a fairly large Greek cruise ship bound for three or four stops around the Greek Islands of Mykonos, Crete, and Santorini. We've been milling around lavishly on this boat for about seven hours now, the time currently being 1600h.

I've already invested 50 euros into our boat-operated debit system, which is tied to each room under individual names. I tried sunbathing on deck and didn’t enjoy that, I tried some of the included cruise food and really didn’t enjoy that...the closest I’ve come to enjoying the cruise was getting a massage. I received a 20 minute back-massage from a short asian woman named Cherry, who I suspected wore braces from her cruise's promise of free dental. She was quiet and smiley, going through questions of stress and pained muscles preemptive to my oily appointment. Cherry was eager to push on each rivet between my back-bones, excusing the rough (really uncomfortable at times) pushes of her palm by repeating "oh, you've really got knots here." It was just okay. I think too many ad campaigns and vacation services stress luxury massages (pun not intended).

Anyways, our first night in Greece was...eventful. Before setting sail on Olympia, we stayed for one night in a small, dimly-lit hotel in Athens. Arty and Summit preemptively called both beds in our room and it was unfortunately decided that I’d be squashed into the provided cot, which rested on a squeaky, uncomfortable frame of metal pipes. Our room was small for three, our bathroom could barely fit one person, and our window view was less than spectacular.

Our room was northerly adjacent to Gibson, Brandon, and Andy’s room. Across the hall was Menard and his friend-cum-chaperone, Mr. Souza. Souza, for lack of a better term, sucks. He’s the worst. He kicked me out of my seat on the plane because he “prefers the window seat”...everyone prefers the window seat! I had to sit in the middle between him and James. James and he were okay seatmates, but...it was just the principle of it all.

Anyways, just past their room was Dipper’s room. Randall, Thomas and Dipper would all hang out and talk and laugh, I’m sure, about something or other. He seems to love those friends.

Fine. I was a little jealous. I like those friends a lot. And I wanted to finish Kung Fu Hustle!

Past their room were 2 or 3 more rooms of singers (I always forget just how many people came on this tour, sheesh) who I hadn’t talked to much. Most of those rooms were seniors or sophomores anyway, people I don’t see as often as juniors.

So our days in Athens went on with tours (which were incredibly photogenic and fun, apart from the sheer number of people everywhere at any given time) and paid dinners (which were consistently underwhelming taste-wise and size-wise, introducing a new trend of our group to totally deplete every restaurant’s bread supply because we all expected not to be full by any pre-paid serving of moussaka).

After dinner Mr. Menard sat everyone down in the hotel lobby and gave his apparently famous beginning-of-trip speech to everyone about drinking and sneaking out after check. Just hearing him talk about it made me pretty nervous. Every time his eyes glazed over to mine when addressing us all I held my breath. I didn’t know what nefarious plans these singers had in mind! I mean, I knew previous groups had had nights of drinking and partying, but I guess it never crossed my mind during this trip...needless to say, I assumed at least tonight would be calm.

Nope! Silly Wirt! Why would it be calm? You’re rooming with Arty and Summit, remember?

Quickly after Menard’s lecture I find Summit and Arty in the hotel room crouched down below the TV. Both are calmly moving what looks like dozens of beers from a plastic bag to our mini-fridge.

“Guys! What the hell are you doing?!” Oh, Wirt. You think they know what they’re doing?

“Wirt, don’t be so loud!” Summit whispered.

“We got these for tonight. Gibby, Brandon and Andy are coming by later to hang out,” A way too calm Arty explained. In that moment my head was swimming.

“Arty, didn’t you guys just hear what Menard said? This is really bad...like, really really bad! How many of those beers did you even get?!”

“I got around 30,” Summit replied, not seeing that response as anything but normal and expected.

I was pretty paralyzed by my own thought process. I sort of ground to a halt and sat on the edge of Arty’s bed. I think my hands were shaking a little.

 

After waiting about 45 minutes in our hotel room (Arty explained they needed to wait a bit before leaving their room so Menard and Souza would fall asleep), Arty and Summit sprang up from their beds, put their phones back in their pocket, and were just about ready to get the other three.

However, right as they readied themselves to leave, someone knocked on our door. I, staying in my bed and watching this whole thing, felt my chest bind up immediately. Arty, on the other hand, was beyond relaxed. He thought it was his friends from next-door coming over by themselves. Art swung the door open and Mr. Menard walked in and greeted us casually, Mr. Souza trailing behind him without a greeting. Mr. Menard was happy and calm, he was asking us about the day and what we thought so far. I was tongue-tied in every sense of the phrase. Summit and Arty were their typical selves, even as Menard inched closer to the main area of our room towards...the stuff. I thought about jumping through the hotel room window but it would’ve been too theatrical. The balcony would’ve been easier to jump from anyway.

“So, boys, as you know I’m just checking to make sure you guys aren’t doing anything bad tonight. Can I check your fridge?” He asked us, receiving the littlest whisper of a “sure” from a now pale Arty.

I almost want to say the drinks magically disappeared and Menard didn’t see anything and he went his merry way, but that isn’t how it happened. He found Summit’s metric ton of alcohol, he and Souza put it all in a black garbage bag (with other drinks already collected inside), and asked us to follow them to their room. I hung my head as we walked through the hallway not in shame but in shock. I became well acquainted with the Georgian carpet of our hotel’s floor.

We walked into his room and saw others already collected and waiting (apparently we were the last room to be checked). It was us, three sophomores I barely knew who I predicted were daring from the start of the trip just based on looks, two seniors who looked calm but chagrined, and Thomas, Randall, and...Dipper? That made zero sense. Randall and Thomas were like me and Dipper...I started piecing it together as Menard began lecturing us. Menard calmly explained the dangers of our choices and the international risks involved while I remembered how seemingly rebellious or creative or...something Dipper was when we talked on the bus. I wasn’t worried for Dipper, per se, I was more worried that I’d have to try drinking and partying if I wanted to get closer to Dipper. Would I do that? It might be fun, I thought. Even now, as I write this on the cruise ship, am considering it. It’d certainly get me towards him.

When Menard finished we all headed back to our rooms and tried not to consider what the future of our trip had in store, especially in the area of Menard’s respect and relationship towards all of us. It wasn’t the most special beginning to the trip we could’ve had.

 

* * *

 

Either way, now we’re here on our cruise ship and that debacle seems like it was weeks ago. It’s funny how times stretch and shrink like that. What was only yesterday feels so old and what seemed like such a stab in the heart to Menard quickly became water under the bridge.

I exhausted the cruise’s amenities pretty quickly and started reading in my little cabin. I’m now rooming with three students: Arty, from before, Chandler, a sophomore who was in Menard’s room last night, and Zach, a senior who isn’t quite as rebellious as Chandler but who is so ready all the time to discuss the business he runs. It’s grating and condescending every time he brings it up.

Our room is nicer on the boat too, this time each of us getting a twin bed molded into the edge of the wall. Each cabin had four beds, two desks, two closets, and a bathroom, which sounds spacious and accommodating, but was really all of those pieces somehow shoved into a closet-sized space. I’m not complaining (too much) though. I sat and read a book by Jules Verne and listened to Paul de Jong softly on my iPod. I had to stop after a half hour, though, too wrapped up in thinking about tonight and I ended up turning to this diary/journal/whatever-it-is.

So now, here I am, figuring this whole situation out. Dipper and I had been acquaintances for a while and now we’re starting to get closer, but...I’m not sure what to do! I don’t even know if he’s gay! Er, bi, I guess.

 

  
As Wirt finished typing his entry he heard a discreet bang against the wall outside, followed by a louder thud against his door.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's rare that I write more than one chapter to any of my stories, so this is a big moment! I hope you enjoy. Thank you for reading.
> 
> animudoodles.tumblr.com


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